Brack v. Tingley

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal is from a judgment for the defendant for costs in the Superior Court of Baltimore in an appeal by a creditor of a decedent who had excepted unsuccessfully in the Orphans’ Court to an administration account that allowed $500.00 for funeral expenses in an estate which had only $500.00 in assets. Thomas J. Tingley, Jr., a member of the Baltimore Bar, died in June 1955. All of his assets were in the joint names of himself and his wife, Helen C. Tingley.

Soon after his death she paid the funeral bill of over $900.00 with her individual funds. Mr. Tingley’s will, naming his wife as executrix, was probated in February 1956 and she qualified as executrix. In early January 1957, the estate received $500.00 that was due Mr. Tingley as a legal fee. This was the only asset of the estate.

The executrix prepared a first and final administration account, in which she charged herself with the cash inventory of $500.00 and craved allowance of $500.00 on account of the funeral bill, $17.10 in costs, the bond premium of $10.00, and the widow’s allowance of $75.00, and accounted for the entire estate by advancing and waiving payment of $102.10. The account was approved by the Orphans’ Court on January 23, 1957. At the times the account was prepared and approved, the executrix was aware that the appellant, William F. Brack, was claiming that the estate owed him $250.00, the sum he had paid Mr. Tingley as a retainer, on the ground that no services had been rendered for the retainer. On February 14, 1957, Mr. Brack recovered judgment for $250.00 in the People’s Court of Baltimore City ⁴⁷ against Mrs. Tingley as executrix (a happy Valentine he characterized it), and filed a certified copy in the Orphans’ Court.

On March 28, Mr. Brack, as a judgment creditor, excepted to the administration account that had been approved in January for the reasons (a) that the executrix did not charge the estate with the proceeds of insurance policies and bank accounts received by Mrs. Tingley; and (b) that the executrix paid $500.00 of the funeral bill “without authority and without filing a required petition asking Court to allow it”, and that the use of all the assets to pay the funeral bill defrauded the exceptant of his $250.00 judgment claim. The frustrated feeling of the appellant that it was unfair and improper for Mrs. Tingley to receive all of her husband’s assets outside the estate and then to make the estate insolvent by using all of its assets to pay funeral expenses, leaving him an unpaid creditor, unable ever to collect, is understandable, but the law affords him no recourse and the judgment appealed from must be affirmed. The first ground of exception was not seriously pressed below or in this Court. It is the rule rather than the exception for contracts of insurance to call for the proceeds of a policy to be paid to a named beneficiary and not to the estate of the insured.

Almost as usual is the putting of assets in the joint names of husband and wife and, if it is not done to defraud creditors, such a tenancy is, of course, lawful and transfers title directly to the survivor rather than through the conduit of the estate of the deceased. There is no suggestion here, much less proof, that any assets